The Boats of Vallisneria by Michael J. Redford – Rain

Tags

ash, beauty, bridge, clouds, consciousness, cottage, dawn, eyes, garden, gazing, gold, grass, grey, hedge, hill, land, leaves, light, memory, Michael J Redford, mist, morning, passing, petunia, quiet, radio, rain, reflection, river, roads, silence, silver, sky, skyline, smell, sound, speech, starlings, stillness, stone, summer, sun, sycamore, the Boats of Vallisneria, trees, valley, village, water, weather, willow, writing

Rain

“The morning will be overcast with frequent showers. They will be heavy at times in the south east but brighter weather will follow later from the west …”

Thus spake the oracle from the radio early one summer morning casting his own black cloud over the hearts of many.   I was a keen cyclist in my teens and at many a weekend my schoolmate and I would grease up our cycles and head for the open road.   Shoreham was our target this particular day but the voice of doom did not quell our enthusiasm.   The weather was kind to us on the way down with the sun occasionally breaking through the gloom above to splash a little watery light on the road ahead and we arrived on the outskirts of the village at around nine o’clock. Passing Samuel Palmer’s old cottage we came upon the bridge and dismounted.   After a strenuous exercise, it is a delight to lean upon a bridge and gaze upon the waters emerging from beneath one’s feet.   The flow catches the eye and lifts it slowly into the distance and the senses relax to the accompaniment of its music.   There weren’t many gnats and midges at that time of day, but those that were about were flying very low indeed.   Certainly there was rain about and it wasn’t very far off either for we could just detect the faint scent of it even above the mass of water at our feet.   Not wishing to miss any of its quiet charm, we walked our bicycles through the village, and as the sky grew heavy above us, my thoughts turned to my companion’s pet tortoise Horace who had been extremely active earlier that morning, this being a sure sign of approaching rain.   We turned down the hill past the Crown Hotel, on past the water mill which was then a tea house (I believe it is now a private dwelling) and out onto the banks of the Darenth.

A damp mist had filtered through the trees on the hill opposite and the grey light had transmuted the upturned leaves of ash and sycamore into flecks of silver that hung without movement in the stillness of the impending downpour.   An old weeping willow, pollarded of its crowning glory, leaned out from the bank across the water and as I peered into its dark reflection a crayfish, startled by the leviathan that reared above it, scuttled beneath the smooth stones. As I gazed, the picture was suddenly distorted.   A raindrop had followed immediately by another and yet another and soon I was no longer able to fathom the depths.   We donned our capes, drew up our knees and huddled against the tree like two diminutive bell tents.   Cozy in our little dry islands, the raindrops drummed upon our capes in anger and hissed at us from the river turning it into a boiling cauldron.   The mist that had settled among the trees on the hill opposite had drifted on making way for a great veil of rain that spanned the skyline in graceful folds – a grey but beautiful replica of the Aurora Borealis.

As the curtain drifted slowly by, the day grew appreciably lighter and the deluge eased to a steady drizzle.   Soon after, the clouds broke a little, and a shaft of pure gold struck the hills, becoming wider at its base as it raced swiftly down the valley.   Then the rain ceased as quickly as it had begun and silence, the ethereal beauty of which is always magnified when the rains are over, tumbled into the valley.   We sat in silence beside the bubbling waters and for several minutes we watched its breathless pursuit of the shaft of gold.

It is within such a quietude that I sit now jotting down these notes.   This morning was a grey but clean smelling morning upon which the hedgerow leaves quivered.   It had been raining all night but had stopped just as dawn broke, leaving behind a miscellany of drips and drops, musical and echoing.   Each blade of grass had its tip bent by a raindrop and the clothes line was a string of pearls waiting to be spilled upon the lawn by the quick grasp of a starling’s feet.   By mid-morning the low cloud had dispersed and great mountains of summer cumulus were heaped about the sky.   It was my intention this morning to tackle one or two gardening chores that had been neglected but due to a tiny and insignificant happening, these have yet to be done.   As I passed the petunia bed, I bent to pick up an old seed packet that had appeared and my sleeve touched a petunia leaf.   Upon this leaf there were three rain drops, and as the leaf was set in motion, the three tiny drops rushed towards one another and merged into one large globule that trembled precariously in the centre of the leaf before rolling off the edge and disappearing into the soil.   This tiny happening caused my mind to leap back across the years to remember once more a particular drop of water out of all the millions that must have fallen that day at Shoreham; a single drop of water that has long since been returned to Poseidon from whence it came. We were walking back through the village when we paused awhile beside a cottage garden to discuss our plans.   The clouds were now few and the sun was strong in the cleansed sky drawing out the sweet scent of purity from the land.   Suddenly, a spark of light leapt from the ground and pierced my eye.   So bright was it that it might well have been of solid substance, for it so dazzled the eye that it quite took the breath from me.   I stooped to discover the origin of this manifestation and there, within the cupped hands of a lupin leaf was a tiny trembling rain drop.   It was a perfect globe clearer than crystal; a gem that would have done justice to the diadem of the most illustrious of monarchs.

So it is that my gardening chores for today have once more been neglected.   A rain drop fell from a leaf and in that single drop a flood of memories, memories I felt I had to record, for – they had been pushed so far below the plane of consciousness, that I was afraid they would never have come to the fore again.

 

read the collected work as it is published: here

 

 

^{————w}(O)_{rmholes________________________________|—–}

beauty & dawn & rain & silence wormhole: The Boats of Vallisneria by Michael J. Redford – Sky
bridge wormhole: Great Bridge, Rouen, 1896
clouds & passing wormhole: slight sneer
eyes wormhole: mandala offering
garden wormhole: A Corner of the Garden at the Hermitage, 1877
gold & grey & leaves & sun & trees wormhole: Lapping Reflections [Deep Within Waters] – I took my camera into the fields
hedge wormhole: it’s / not what you do or what you say / if it ain’t got that swing
light & river wormhole: the Bodhisattva set out / for the Seat of Awakening
mist & morning & sound wormhole: 10/30 by William Carlos Williams
quiet wormhole: quietly in my quiet house
radio wormhole: within
reflection wormhole: in turgid reflection
roads & silver wormhole: Hastings: neither all or nothing
sky & speech & writing wormhole: 11/1 by William Carlos Williams
skyline wormhole: Boulevarde Montmartre, Evening Sun, 1879 // Boulevarde Montmartre at Night, 1879
smell wormhole: prose piece 2 from POEMS 1927 by William Carlos Williams
stillness wormhole: Lapping Reflections [Deep Within Waters] – pigs
stone wormhole: “And anger it is that lays in ruins / every kind of mental goodness.”
water wormhole: Valentine’s Day 2019

 

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YOUNG SYCAMORE by William Carlos Williams

Tags

1927, 6*, air, branches, division, growth, gutter, pavement, sound, sycamore, trunk, twigs, water, William Carlos Williams, youth

                                YOUNG SYCAMORE

                I must tell you
                this younf tree
                whose round and firm trunk
                between the wet

                pavement and the gutter
                (where water
                is trickling) rises
                bodily

                into the air with
                one undulant
                thrust half its height–
                and then

                dividing and waning
                sending out
                young branches on
                all sides–

                hung with cocoons–
                it thins
                till nothing is left of it
                but two

                eccentric knotted
                twigs
                bending forward
                hornlike at the top

 

from Poems, 1927: its the indigeogravity that I like of justwhatistherehere … only

 

 

^{————w}(O)rmholes_________________________________|—–

air wormhole: La Route, Effet d’Hiver, 1872
branches wormhole: pursued
sound wormhole: St. Erasmus in Bishop Islip’s Chapels, 1796
water & William Carlos Williams wormhole: SPRING AND ALL XXII by William Carlos Williams

 

that comicbookshop … // … in dreams

Tags

1960s, 2015, 8*, anxiety, bay window, black, childhood, collecting, comics, doing, doors, dream, Edward Hopper, eyes, floorboards, frustration, grey, heart, high, hill, labyrinth, lemon, life, lifetimes, lino, message, moon, morning, numbers, path, pipes, Plumstead, power, reaching, searching, shadow, shops, sky, smell, society, streets, sycamore, Thames, universe, walls, windows, Woolwich, wormhole, writing

that comicbookshop …

where the sidestreets meet together off the highstreets
under slanting shadows down the rear pipework of façades and blackened window
from so much higher up than could never concern us it’s frightening,
the morning after Hopper’s Nighthawks,
is closing down

the ones I try to get to when I find myself done in town
(right after the frustration of trying to get somewhere or the anxiety of trying to
get away from somewhere that always follows me) but never arrive at;
I make my various ways there, I know the routes
like the back of my hand

the ones with warped door stuck at the top or stuck at the bottom
(will the glass pane hold), with step onto lino once lemon and grey with hope
now one with the floorboards sagging under warren of backrooms (forgotten lifetimes
wormholes everywhere) to the pulp of paper and number for finding,                
are closing down; I

should have patronised them more, I suppose;
`still haven’t found that second issue, that elusive fourth, and the stacks
just kept on sliding: lettering and universes pressing their skies and moons into my eyeball
but I couldn’t keep up with them, blinked too soon, have to get on,
things to do, places to be

it’s having a sale, clearing all stock; the sentinels stand impassive
to all find, impassive to all loss, hooded eyes on somefaraway beach;
for old times’ sake I pick some up, figures reaching stanceofopera out of panel,
maybe a sixth issue, maybe an intertextual fanzine, avoid the modern
too defined in detail, too static in marque,

and come away with stash held to heart, out
into the bustle busily in all direction, weak indication and giant message
I’ll work my way uphill by quiet sidestreet past high walls holding sycamores and
bay windows over the river home to catalogue my finds like a labyrinth and
plot their weave like a stanza

… in dreams

 

 

 

^{————w}(O)rmholes_________________________________|—–

anxiety & searching wormhole: pocket
black & shops wormhole: the silent night of the Batman
childhood & life wormhole: alighted
comics wormhole: ah … // oh … // meanwhile … // … // tha ya ta …
doing & dream & lifetimes wormhole: comfy
doors wormhole: hello, luvvey, do you want a cup of tea?
Edward Hopper wormhole: El Palacio, 1946
eyes wormhole: Lapping Reflections [Deep Within Waters] – snow
grey & morning & Plumstead & shadow & sky & streets wormhole: faintly apricot air?
lemon wormhole: 1967
moon wormhole: the too big moon
path wormhole: Clea
power wormhole: the skyline
smell wormhole: 1967
society wormhole: this sodden land
Thames wormhole: time
walls wormhole: familiasyncopation
windows wormhole: open window
Woolwich wormhole: up on the hill
writing wormhole: writing: // in turn

 

The Boats of Vallisneria by Michael J Redford – A Sign of the Times

Tags

1967, 3*, air, autumn, blackberries, blackbird, branches, brown, change, chestnut tree, childhood, climbing, clouds, cottage, countryside, cows, echo, elm, Essex, field, grass, green, grey, hawthorne, hedge, hill, ivy, lark, leaves, life, memory, Michael J Redford, mist, oak, path, red, RF Hilder, rook, running, seagull, signpost, silence, singing, sitting, sky, skyline, snake, summer, sycamore, the Boats of Vallisneria, time, tits, trees, vista, walking, wind, woodland, work, yellow

A Sign of the Times

Things are changing around us all the time and when one lives with and through these changes it can be very difficult to tell when they occur.   Changes are more evident and in many cases more startling when one returns to a scene of bygone years, and this has never been made more clear to me than now as I sit beside a signpost in an Essex lane.   It is a contrast so shocking that it has left me quite numb, and it is difficult to understand how not only the facial character, but also the spiritual character of the countryside can be altered beyond recognition.

Some five years ago, I holidayed with friends who lived in south east Essex.   One morning I crossed the meadow at the rear of the cottage and entered Ten Acres which sloped gently to the woods below.   The full heat of the summer had abated to the mildness of early autumn and great mountains of cumulous, creamy topped, towered above me, their shadows coursing silently over the yellow-grey stubble.   Two glistening sea gulls above the oaks did verbal battle with a colony of rooks quarrelling in the elms and, far above, it seemed a thousand larks were singing.   Blackberries, some bright red others over-ripe and heavy with juice, shaded themselves in the hedgerow, and beside a weathered bale of straw, forgotten perhaps or left too wet for carting, a grass snake basked in the sun.

Gazing down the green slope, there came within me a sudden desire to run, to stretch my legs in great leaping strides, to see the hedgerows flash by in a blur and to feel the mild air stream about me.   I wanted to race the wind that went tumbling down the hill to the woods below.   Twenty years earlier the desire would have been satiated without further thought, but time passes and the unconscious brakes of inhibition condemn these simple pleasures to the memory’s store.   For one brief second I was a young boy again about to satisfy a desire, but then all too soon, I was a man again, and grown men are not expected to behave in such a manner.   To see a child walking along the road in an orderly fashion one moment and then break into a mad gallop the next is an occurrence accepted without question, but many an eyebrow would be raised if I were to do such a thing now.   Such are the many simple pleasures we must perforce leave aside as we grow up.   There are of course many other pleasures which take their place, but even so the illogical, spontaneous desires of childhood every so often burst within the heart and flood the mind with memories.

I had reached the wood and was a boy once more.   Gazing above, I felt a sudden desire to reach up and haul myself into the green branches.   One can climb a tree a hundred times and go up and come down a hundred different ways.   I think perhaps it is the additional dimension which gives tree climbing that extra fascination, for if one explores an area of ground, one has but two dimensions to contend with, but up here in a green swaying arbour, one has a third.   In the fullness of summer, high up in the sycamores and the chestnuts, there are green caverns to explore, and the diverging paths that disappear into the foliage above lure one on to the very top where, in green shrouded secrecy, one can survey the surrounding terrain.

To me, and no doubt to a large number of other adults, these things still hold a fascination and most of us are able to fulfil these old desires in one way or another.   It may be by toying with model railways or messing about in boats; it may be by dressing for the local amateur dramatics or taking part in a sport.   On the other hand, it may be by casting a furtive glance over the shoulder and climbing a tree.

After walking for an hour or so, I came upon a signpost beside an open gate and, finally bowing to the truth that I am no longer a boy, I sat beside the gate to rest my weary legs.   The foliage of the countryside had turned a very dark green, almost brown in fact, heralding an early autumn.   The grass between the drills of faded stubble would not grow much higher now.   It had been an early year altogether and quite a large number of farmers had managed a second cut of hay.   Now the harvest was done and the good earth awaited the plough and the frost.   Hawthorn berries were an abundant red across the headland and a distant skein of Friesians grazed their way slowly across the skyline above.   A tit leapt across my view and into a thicket close by and made the shiny red rose-hips dance.   All around was the gentle yet positive movement of life.   It was something to be not only seen, but felt.   Little did I realise then how all this was to be changed.

Now five years have passed and I am once more beside the signpost, but this year the summer has been short.   Already the trees are bare and possess that clipped appearance of a Hilder autumnal study.   The tall grasses in the leafless hedgerows bend stiffly beneath the chilly winds which have been noticeable this past month.   Gone is the suppleness in their sway, gone is the living green from their stems.   Soon a wintry gale will snap and blow them into the ditches to join the ghosts of previous years.   The lanes are filled with dead leaves, but no longer do they echo with the laughter of children as they wade knee deep through them, for nobody comes this way now.   The gate hangs askew on its rusty hinges and needs to be lifted and torn from the coarse grasses which grasp the bottom rail.   Such action however, is not necessary, for although the signpost once read ‘Public Footpath’, no one walks this way now.   The letters are illegible and covered with green lichen, and around its rotting base a small ivy begins to reach for the sky.   The footpath which ran diagonally across the field is no longer to be seen, not that this matters either, for the tiny lane bears no traveller save that of the drifting mists of autumn.

(R.F. Hilder (1905 – 1993), an English marine and landscape artist and book illustrator).

I gazed at the signpost and thought of the sweat that went into the making of it.   Strong backs bent to dig the hole, strong arms lifted the stout wooden post.   A craftsman’s eye morticed in the sign that is as square today as it ever was.   The painted letters have peeled and left but a ghost on the woodwork.   It doesn’t matter anyway, for no one passes this way now.   But it used to lead somewhere.   For someone the sign pointed to journey’s end; once cows scratched their necks upon it and children used it as a target for throwing pebbles.   But now it merely points to the wind.   There is a strange silence in the sky.   No rooks, gulls or larks can I hear; no animals rustling in the hedgerows.   Never have I witnessed such an empty land, a land so void of life and feeling.   Although the wind is cold upon my neck, I cannot hear it in the trees and the dead leaves, sodden from the wandering mists, make no sound as they fling themselves at my boots.   The ditches have filled with rotted vegetation and the water has spread.   Marsh grasses and wild flock have appeared for a brief spell of life.   And brief it will be, for six months from now, the new town will be born.

                Once I worked among green hills
                And as I worked I sang, oh yes
                I sang mid the trees, in echoing woods
                And o’er the dewy fields.

                I sang with the rising lark, whose voice
                Cascaded from above,
                I sang always a joyous song
                Of those things that I love.

                My orchestra came from the wind,
                From trickling brooks and rustling leaves,
                From earth below and all about,
                E’en heaven’s lofty eaves.

                But now my green hills lay beneath
                A glaring concrete face
                And where once sang the blackbird’s heart,
                Ten thousand people pace.

                So now accompaniment have I none,
                Nor reason for to sing.
                My heart they buried ‘neath the stone
                When marched the new town in.

 

read the collected work as it is published: here

 

 

^{————w}(O)rmholes_________________________________|—–

air & branches & seagull wormhole: Lapping Reflections [Deep Within Waters] – gull circling out at sea
autumn & hedge & leaves & trees & wind wormhole: The Boats of Vallisneria by Michael J Redford – Simon Upon The Downs
blackbird & childhood wormhole: Lapping Reflections [Deep Within Waters] – from arm to nature, doing nothing
brown & grey & path & red & silence & yellow wormhole: hello, luvvey, do you want a cup of tea?
change wormhole: reaching branch
clouds & sitting wormhole: and smile / like a bud
echo wormhole: fresh destiny
field wormhole: Lapping Reflections [Deep Within Waters] – I suddenly / remembered
green & sky wormhole: through the pane – poewieview #34
life & mist & time wormhole: AT-tennnnnnnn – waitfrit waitfrit – SHUN!
oak wormhole: Lapping Reflections [Deep Within Waters] – the soft canticle of the gourds:
skyline wormhole: Lapping Reflections [Deep Within Waters] – autumn
walking wormhole: trying to focus / on walking
work wormhole: travel

 

London Park in Greenwich town – poewieview #5

Tags

1966, 2016, boundary, Bowie, death, earth, Greenwich Park, history, iron, leaves, London, lost, love, oak, sycamore, time, walls

                London Park in Greenwich town

                somewhere under oak
                amid drifts of fallen sycamore

                lay the boundaries of iron and tumult of
                leaning wall historically

                drawing the mounds of centurely death bevelling
                the crowded times when

                lost was almost love
                and love was almost possible

                needlessly

 

Rubber Band, 1966; ‘I hope you break yer baton’

Read the collected movements in David Bowie: Movements in Suite Major

 

 

^{————w}(O)rmholes_________________________________|—–

Bowie & London wormhole: London Hearts – poewieview #4
death & walls wormhole: development
Greenwich Park wormhole: school uniform
history wormhole: finding my own true nature – Plumstead, Woolwich, 190915
leaves & love wormhole: poessay X: soul love – poewieview #2

oak wormhole: Brugges April 2015 – looking lost
time wormhole: sixty four sixty five – poewieview #1

 

that comicbookshop in dreams,

Tags

1960s, 2015, anxiety, arrival, bay window, beach, black, blue, buildings, comics, doing, doors, dream, Edward Hopper, eyes, finding, floorboards, frustration, glass, going, grey, growth, hill, home, hope, identity, lemon, lifetimes, lino, looking, moon, morning, numbers, regret, searching, shadow, shops, sky, step, streets, sycamore, Thames, time, town, trees, universe, Victorian houses, walls, windows, wormhole, writing

 

 

 

that comicbookshop in dreams,

where the sidestreets meet together
off the highstreets under the shadows
slanting down the rear façades of pipework and blackened window
from so much higher up than can never concern us it’s frightening
the morning afer Hopper’s Nighthawks
is closing down

the ones I try to get to
when I find myself done in town (after
the frustration of trying to get somewhere
or the anxiety of trying to get away from a somewhere
that always follows me) but never arrive at; I make
my various ways there, I know the routes
like the back of my hand

the ones with
warped door stuck at the top
or the bottom (will the glass pane hold) with
step onto lino once lemon and grey with new hope
now one with the floorboards as they sag under warren
of backrooms like forgotten lifetimes (wormholes to everywhere) into
the fust and pulp of paper and number all for the finding,
are closing down

I should have
patronised them more, I suppose;
I still haven’t found that second issue, that elusive fourth,
and the stacks just keep sliding wondering other titles and other
universes pressing their sky and moons into my eyeball as I stand
and scan; but I couldn’t keep up, blinked too soon
have to get on, things to do
places to be

it’s having a sale
clearing all the stock; the sentinels stand
impassive with all find, impassive before all loss: hooded
eyes on somefaraway beach; for old times’ sake I pick up some
mid-60s anthologies with their simple figures reaching out of panel
with all the stance of opera, and maybe a sixth issue, and maybe an early
fanzine for some intertextuality, but I’ll avoid the figurines: too
defined in detail, too static
in marque

I’ll come away
with stash held close to my heart
back out into bustle of street busily in all direction
with all the noise of weak indication and strong giant message;
I’ll work my way uphill by quiet sidestreet past high walls that
impossibly hold the looming sycamore and bay-windowed villas
over the river under skies of grey and blue gantry
home to catalogue my finds on the shelf like
a maze and plot their weave in life
like a stanza

 

 

 

^{————w}(O)rmholes_________________________________|—–

anxiety & looking & searching & shops wormhole: lo
beach wormhole: gazing at the night / as my eyes passed the jagged hole / my head disappeared
black wormhole: Black Rook / in Rainy Weather
blue wormhole: Buddha / Shakyamuni
buildings & comics wormhole: escape from Flat Planet
doing wormhole: the endless acts of life
doors & sky & time & windows & writing wormhole: the / very gradual art of sitting
dream & moon wormhole: prayer to my self
Edward Hopper wormhole: Dr Strange I – the trashcan tilted the better to see now the street
eyes wormhole: the Conqueror
glass wormhole: heirloom – break / after heavy shower
grey & Victorian houses wormhole: corner of Plum Lane / Eglinton Hill and / Shrewsbury Lane
hill wormhole: Plumstead – Woolwich – Plumstead 290508 – / the breath of London
identity wormhole: good looking
lemon wormhole: Brugges April 2015 – looking lost
lifetimes wormhole: now, have I forgotten anything
morning wormhole: hot summer / morning
shadow & walls wormhole: of a sudden // all the time
streets wormhole: silhouette: // second / thoughts
Thames wormhole: Jackie’s slight smile
trees wormhole: Exceat to Cuckmere Haven